Cautionary Tale
by ncfan
Summary: The way things fall apart. As if they were whole to start with.


As far as _X-Men _goes, the only sources I'm familiar with are this series and the 90s series. I don't have access to the comics; what I know about them I know from Wikipedia articles. Therefore, I'm drawing mostly from _X-Men: Evolution_, its characterizations, and my own suspicions about what characters might have been like in the past.

And I suppose that for those of you who are familiar with mental illness, either in yourself or in someone you know, this might be potentially distressing, so just to put it out there, this is a trigger warning.

I own nothing.

* * *

Sometimes, okay, a lot of the times, Pietro Maximoff thinks his sister must have been born angry. It's not that she's angry all the time—maybe that would be easier; at least he'd always know what to expect from her. What's really horrible about it is that Wanda, his sister, can go from zero to raging in half a second, blowing up over practically nothing. That half of the time even she couldn't tell you why she'd gotten so inhumanly angry. That after it's over, she seems to crumple and turn in on herself like old newspaper, utterly bereft of the mad energy that consumes her during her rages.

Father probably thinks Wanda was born angry too, when she's in the midst of one of her episodes. He's usually pretty hard for Pietro to read, collected and mostly rather distant, but his frustration is plain for all to see when Wanda dissolves into shaking fury. Pietro's father and sister are both mutants; Pietro figures he must be one too (certainly hopes he's one; he really doesn't want to be the odd one out in the family) but his powers, whatever they may be, haven't manifested yet. Wanda's powers have just recently emerged, and now, when she has an episode, things tend to get broken.

When Wanda starts to shake, when her lips quiver, when the fire starts burning beneath her skin, Father doesn't enlist the aid of Pietro, the neighbors or anyone else. Instead, he takes it upon himself to calm Wanda down before she can get too worked up—or, at least, he tries to—with that frustrated, almost resigned look on his face. At times like that, Pietro is sent out of the house, to wait outside until it's over.

Times like now, as it happens.

Pietro sits on the back stoop, kicking his left heel against a concrete step, staring down at the ground. The sun presses uncomfortably down on the back of his exposed neck. He tries to ignore the sounds escaping from under the cracks at the door at his back, but he can't block them out entirely.

It's kind of hard to understand what's going on behind the door; Father tries his best to keep his voice down at times like these, and as a result only a few disjointed snatches of words filter through the wood behind him. "Wanda, calm… You have to… No, don't!" A high crash of something glass breaking against the floor, followed by something more solid, but blunt, thumping to the ground, makes Pietro wince. _What's going on in there?_

For a few moments, Pietro cranes his head around to stare, wide-eyed, at the door. But when nothing out of the ordinary happens (just the same as always for these incidents), he turns back around. Pietro can still feel his heartbeat, tight and fast, in his neck and fingertips; however, he doesn't think anything really extraordinary is going to happen today.

It might be Pietro's imagination, but it seems like Wanda's fits have been getting worse since her nascent powers emerged. Certainly they've gotten more dangerous. Before, all she could do was kick and scream and cry. Now, her powers go haywire when she's in the grip of a rage. Furniture gets broken. Belongings get smashed. Or Pietro gets seven stitches in his forehead when Wanda brings a tree limb down on his head during a tantrum—Pietro doesn't mind playing with his sister most of the time, but it can be a hazardous activity sometimes.

Another crash of something breaking splits the silence clean in two. Pietro cringes. Yeah, it's definitely gotten worse.

Eventually, all goes quiet. Nothing more gets broken. Father's stopped talking. A crow caws in the distance; Pietro holds his breath. Then Wanda begins to cry, heavy, choking sobs, that gradually grow faint, accompanied by the telltale thud of footsteps, revealing her flight upstairs to her room. When it's over, all she can ever do is cry. Pietro breathes deep, but feels exhausted himself, heavy, tired.

It's probably safe to go inside now. Pietro cracks open the door and peers inside.

The kitchen floor glitters with broken glass; from the table, a heavy file full of loose paper has been toppled to the floor, the ground around the table strewn with scattered papers. Nothing else seems to have been dislodged, and the kitchen itself looks no more trashed than it normally does when it plays host to one of Wanda's episodes.

Father is sweeping up the glass shards into a dust pan, that tired, familiarly frustrated look on his face. When he spots Pietro standing, holding the door ajar, he nods. "Come help me clean up. Put the papers back on the table."

Not daring to speak, Pietro shuts the door behind him, and starts to pick up papers in his hands.

Overhead, he can still hear his sister crying.

-0-0-0-

"B-2."

"Miss."

"G-7."

"Miss."

"A-10."

"Miss, _again_, Wanda."

Though they share little else in common, if the Maximoff twins can agree on anything, they agree that Battleship is the world's greatest game this month. Their favorite game tends to shift every once in a while; the last favorite game was Monopoly, until Wanda's attention span ran out and Pietro got bored of games that seem a lot more like homework than actual games. They also couldn't agree on who got to be the race car. That didn't help.

So here they are, sitting on the floor in Pietro's room, playing another round of Battleship one Wednesday afternoon. Right now, it's anyone's game. Pietro's down his battleship and submarine; Wanda's lost her patrol boat and her destroyer. They've hit a lull in the playing, where Wanda brushes a bit of the curtain of her dark hair away from her eyes and asks, "When did Father say he'd be back?"

She sounds nervous. Not of Father, Pietro feels like, but at the rupture in the routine. Any break from the routine, and Wanda starts to get nervous, starts to breathe hard, starts to sweat. Of course, it's not like Father being gone for a long time is anything really all that out of the ordinary, but still, she treats it as something abnormal, something outside of the boundary what's normal, what's safe.

"Tomorrow morning, I think," Pietro answers her, and Wanda nods, tension going out of her shoulders. "C-2."

"Okay, then. That's a miss, and, umm, E-6?"

"Miss."

Neither Pietro nor Wanda are quite sure just what it is their father does for work. They tried to ask him once, teaming up as they do when they feel the need for safety in numbers. The only response they got was "_I'll tell you when you're older; don't worry about it right now,_" spoken in the sort of voice that tended to indicate that he didn't want to be asked again.

What Pietro can tell you is that whatever it is that Father does for work, he's got some pretty erratic work hours. Sometimes he's gone in the morning, or has to leave at night. Sometimes he's home for days on end. Sometimes, he's gone for days at a time, and can't give them any promises of when he'll be back—he's never gone long enough for them to run out of food, but it's still a really long time sometimes.

And when he's home, he's always poring over maps, or graphs, or charts, circling things, making corrections, writing notes. One day he might throw away the newspaper after reading it and the next he might keep it, eyes gleaming strangely. Whenever someone calls the house, either Father takes the phone into another room or shoos the twins _out _of the room.

_Maybe he's a secret agent or something._

_Nah, too obvious._

As the game wears on things go well for Pietro. He blows Wanda's aircraft carrier clean out of the water and manages to avoid having any more of his own ships sunk. He allows himself a grin; this game is his for sure!

"F-9," Wanda tries, brow furrowed.

"Miss," Pietro answers smugly, looking over the board to see where he should strike next.

He should probably have been taking stock of the look on his sister's face instead.

"Hey!" Wanda exclaims, indignant. "You're cheating, aren't you!"

Pietro nearly chokes, not at the accusation itself but at Wanda's quavering tone. "No, I'm not," he assures her, thoughts racing. If she has an outburst here and now, his room will get trashed. Worse still, Father isn't here to stop her, to calm her down, and if Wanda isn't stopped before she's allowed to build up steam she probably won't stop at just trashing her brother's room. _Oh, oh geez… Come on, think, think…_

"Yes you are!"

"I'm not!" Is all Pietro can think to say in his own defense. He actually has tried to cheat at Battleship before; Wanda's accusation isn't entirely without merit. However, Pietro had got it in his head that cheating at games was a _really _bad idea once Wanda had caught him. He's not stupid enough to try that again.

Suddenly, a white "miss" peg flies up and hits Pietro in the face.

Then, another one.

Before Pietro can react, he's being pelted with pegs. He throws one arm up to shield his face and with the other turns his grid around so Wanda can see it. "Ack, stop! I'm not cheating! Look!"

Just as quickly as the pegs started flying, they fall to the ground, inert and, once again, harmless. Pietro lowers his arm cautiously, not quite willing to believe that he's completely out of the woods.

"Sorry," Wanda mutters sullenly, her knees pulled up to her chest. She stares down at the ground, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Whatever." Pietro glares down at the grid. A few of the ships have been knocked from their places; there's no salvaging this game. "I'm sick of this. Let's just finish our homework."

Wanda's mouth pulls to the left. "I don't want to," she mumbles into her sleeve. "It's hard." That's a common complaint of Wanda's. She can't focus long enough to do anything school-related that's more complex than addition and subtraction without it taking forever. It's gotten so bad that Father's been making them both do their homework downstairs; Pietro so he can't cheat and Wanda so he can make sure she actually does it.

"Fine. But Father will be angry with you when he gets back if he finds out you didn't do it."

_That _gets Wanda's attention. The prospect of parental disappointment always does. "You think so?" she asks, eyes wide.

Pietro nods firmly. "Yeah." Of course, Father would be mad at him too if Wanda didn't do her homework; it's Pietro's job to keep Wanda on track when no one else is around. And neither one of them like it at all when Father's angry. But Wanda takes it to heart, a lot more than Pietro does. "Definitely. Let's do it together. Don't you think it'll be easier, then?"

As they start to head downstairs, Pietro casts one last glance down at his bedroom floor littered with red and white pegs and scattered ships, and sighs. He'll clean up the mess later.

-0-0-0-

Wanda flinches as the bus hits another bump on the road, and huddles next to the window. Sitting next to her, Pietro scowls and tries not to fall off the seat. Yeah, he knows Wanda hates crowds, and he knows she hates being stuck in a small, crowded place. So yes, he knows why Wanda always insists on having the window sweat. But does she have to choose the back of the bus every time? Doesn't she know how bumpy the ride is at the back of the bus? Does she just hate him or something?

And that's not all.

"How could you fail that quiz?" he asks for what feels like the umpteenth time. "It was _so _easy!"

She shrugs helplessly. "I don't know. I thought I did good. I thought I really knew it this time." She bites her lip and twiddles with the pale pink hem of her shirt. The "F" written on her paper in stark scarlet ink tells a different story.

Pietro doesn't understand it. Wanda does better than him at Art and P.E., something that causes Pietro no end of white-hot envy. Her Reading and Spelling grades aren't that bad either. But once she gets to things like Math and Science and Social Studies, she folds. She tries so hard—Pietro gets a front row seat to see how hard she tries—but rarely, if ever, does Wanda's efforts get the result they deserve.

He looks at the dejection stamped across her face and almost immediately feels guilty for needling her. "Look," he says hesitantly, "maybe next time, if it's hard… You can look off of my paper?" They sit next to each other in class; it wouldn't be hard.

Wanda's face screws up. "That's cheating!"

"Okay, okay. I just thought that you could, if you wanted to."

She shakes her head vigorously. "I want to get good grades by myself. I'm not gonna look at your paper. But, erm…" she rubs her arm "…Thanks, Pietro." Wanda gives him a watery smile, and goes back to staring out the window. Several sights go passing before their eyes: the grocery store, cluttered with buggies and cars, the park, sandy and rusting, the local mental hospital, looming and ominous. Wanda seems to notice none of them, and Pietro is too busy staring at her to look at them.

When she's angry, Wanda's a law unto herself. She heeds nothing but her own rage and eventually her own exhaustion when inevitably the flame of her anger fizzles out. When she's not Pietro thinks she's kinda stupid, the way all girls are kinda stupid and gross and weird. But it also occurs to him that just now was the first time Wanda's smiled in three days.

He thinks he likes "stupid, gross, and weird" Wanda a lot better than the Wanda who bends reality around her.

-0-0-0-

"You think we should ask him today?" Pietro asks his sister in an undertone.

And, once again, the look of determination that comes over Wanda's face surprises him, just as it had when she'd proposed this in the first place. Wanda's many things, but so resolutely determined that it shows on the outside? Not often. "Yeah. He doesn't _look _angry or anything." Pietro hesitates in the doorway, still clutching his book bag. "Come on, Pietro," she hisses. "Aren't you curious?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

"What are you two whispering about?" Father calls suddenly from the living room, making the twins jump. They exchange a wide-eyed glance. Wanda hurries towards the living room; after a moment's hesitation, Pietro follows.

If Father finds himself perplexed to have his children standing in front of him, staring awkwardly up at him, he doesn't show it. Instead, he meets their gazes squarely. "Yes?"

Wanda, mastermind of this incident, squirms a little bit under his piercing stare, but doesn't wilt or lose her nerve. "Umm, we were wondering… Who… Who was our mother?"

Something, a spasm, passes like a shadow over Father's face. It takes Pietro a second to recognize that as the mirror of what comes over his face when he gets scrapes or finds himself nursing his bruises after a fight at school. He doesn't answer her for a long time, and the silence seems to put distance between them. It's like the calm before a storm, or the tension growing, crackling in the air before Wanda's sanity collapses in place of ire. Already dubious about this whole thing, Pietro really starts to feel as though this wasn't a good idea and that Wanda shouldn't be allowed to get ideas in the future.

But Father doesn't respond with anger or anything that would send the twins scattering. Instead, he sets his book down and stands, sighing heavily. "Sit down, and wait here. I'll be back in a moment."

While they wait, Wanda kicks her heels against the leg of the couch, clutching one hand in the other, growing nervous; Pietro eyes her warily, going over in his head how long it would take him to get out of the house if she melted down. Thankfully, they're not kept waiting for very long. A few moments after having left, Father returns with something clasped in his hands. Settling between them, he reveals that something to be a photo album. Pietro's eyebrows shoot up, so amazed is he at how readily Father has obliged their curiosity.

The photo album is a thin little thing and seems to hold precious few photographs. Father flips it open to the first whole page, and points to a small photo trapped under the plastic sheath. "This was your mother, Magda," he says quietly.

Pietro frowns and peers at the photo. A woman sits, smiling, staring off at some point out in the distance. It's one of those old, grainy black-and-white photographs, but Pietro can see her clear enough. She's got a kind face, he thinks; she looks sort of like Wanda, but without the brittleness that permeates her even during her sane moments.

The other photo on the opposite page draws Pietro's eye. This one shows Mother and a man, which Pietro realizes with a jolt, is his father as a much-younger man. And smiling, actually smiling. Father so rarely smiles that Pietro has a hard time remembering what that looks like sometimes. He usually wears a serious, rather forbidding look that even in repose sports a light frown. But here is proof that he used to be different. That he used to be a man who smiled in photographs with his wife.

Then, Pietro notices something else. These photos look damaged. Singed around the edges. _What's up with that?_

Apparently, Wanda hasn't noticed. "What's on the next page?" Her pale hand shoots out to turn the page.

The next page has two significantly newer-looking photos. They have captured the image of two small children. "Is that me?" Wanda asks excitedly, pointing at the dark-haired child on the right.

Pietro can't help but think that it's pretty obvious that that's her, but Father, who just seems to be in a bizarrely indulgent mood today, nods. "Yes, Wanda, that's you. I believe you were about a year old when this was taken." He shuts the album, and, amazingly, smiles at her.

Okay… Father was smiling in that picture. And he's smiling now. Will wonders never cease?

In the midst of this happy domestic scene, Pietro can't help but notice some things wrong with all of this. Questions that haven't been answered. What exactly happened to their mother? That question was implicit in Wanda's _Who was our mother? _and Father's showing no sign of feeling the need to answer that question. What's up with those two older photos? And why aren't there any baby pictures of him and Wanda?

Those questions burn on the tip of Pietro's tongue, setting fire to his mouth, but they don't slip out through the cage of his teeth. They die, stuck to the roof of his mouth like peanut butter, at the sight of Wanda's face. There she is, smiling, looking pleased to have a question that apparently was burning at her answered, with Father paying attention to her in some capacity that doesn't involve disappointment or the chaos of her uncontrollable rage. She looks happier now than she almost ever does, all bright eyes and glowing skin.

This day will remain indelibly etched in Pietro's memory for probably the rest of his life. An answer to an old question that raises still more questions, Father's smile, Wanda's last good day, all of these things, they stay with him.

-0-0-0-

Pietro doesn't know why it happened. He doesn't know what set Wanda off. It could easily have been nothing at all. Pietro wasn't with her when it happened. He was still in the lunch line, happily awaiting the wonders of Hot Dog day, when he heard the shattering of glass behind him. Screams rose up like a chorus of the Hell-bound. Then, there was an ear-splitting, horrific _CRACK!_

Like most of the people who were still in the lunch line when pandemonium erupted behind them, Pietro whirled around to see what the commotion was about. Already a cold feeling was forming in the pit of his stomach when he turned around, and that sensation only spread to the rest of him to see what had happened.

All of the lights in the cafeteria had exploded, leaving the floor glittering as though coated with fresh snowfall. Miraculously, no one had been seriously hurt by this. At least two dozen of the linoleum floor tiles were shattered as well. Stunningly, an entire cafeteria table was split cleanly in two lengthwise. Students' lunches had slid towards the split and splattered to the ground; the broken table dripped with chocolate milk and lukewarm chili sauce.

And at the center of it all, huddled in a ball, shaking, sobbing, was Wanda.

No one could prove that this was Wanda's fault. After all, who blamed this sort of thing on a little girl? Who thought that a little girl would make lights explode and cafeteria tables split in two. But though there are few people who know of the existence of mutants, the principal had been around children long enough to look at the situation before her and put two and two together.

Wanda was first whisked away to the nurse's office, alongside all the other children who had gotten cuts and lacerations from the falling glass. They cleaned her cuts and put bandages and Band-aids over the red marks. Pietro was sent to the nurse's office too, because… Well, actually, he had no idea what he was doing there. Maybe the teachers thought Wanda would calm down faster if he was there. If that's the case, Pietro figured it probably wouldn't do any good trying to tell them that nothing but time could bring Wanda back to normal, and kept his mouth shut.

Now, however, they find themselves sitting on the hard wooden bench outside of the principal's office. Wanda's since stopped crying, but her eyes are still red-rimmed, bloodshot, her cheeks flushed scarlet. The principal's called their father and a look of wild terror occasionally slinks to the surface of Wanda's eyes.

Pietro never did get his lunch, and he tries to ignore the pain clinging to the walls of his stomach and the growling that seems to deafen him. They both stare at the ground. Neither of the twins look at each other.

This… This is something new. Wanda's had meltdowns at school before; that's nothing new in itself. She's gotten pretty infamous for it; few of the other children are willing to play with her or do work with her. But never before have any of her outbursts at school gotten so bad that her powers have gone haywire. And Pietro doesn't think he's ever seen her destroy so much in such a short period of time before.

_She's getting more and more powerful all the time. Getting scarier all the time, too. And angrier. What's going on in her head, anyways?_

Pietro sneaks a glance at Wanda, at her bandaged fingers and the small tears in her sweater. There's still a piece of glass caught in her unkempt hair. She doesn't look like someone who just came pretty close to bringing down the roof on everyone's heads, including her own. She looks like a scared little girl who got in trouble and now has to face the music. And honestly, that makes all of this a lot scarier than it would be otherwise. His sister and the monster he sometimes thinks must live inside of her seem like two completely separate entities, but it's getting harder for him to tell them apart in his head. Nowadays, even when she's like this—tired, miserable and utterly spent; and she's like this a lot—Pietro still finds himself fighting the urge to scoot away from her.

_Why is it like this? All the time, why is it like this?_

Two sets of footfalls, one relatively light and the other much heavier, snaps Pietro out of his thoughts.

The principal looks her typical harried, bespectacled self, and there is he is following behind, with that gray greatcoat he always seems to wear once the weather turns cold and an unreadable look on his face.

Wanda's head snaps up; her eyes fix on Father as he approaches them, one part horrified, one part mortified, one part looking as though she'd like nothing better than to shrivel up into nothingness and disappear. Pietro can only imagine what's going through her mind at the moment, though he guesses that mind-numbing terror is probably playing a big part.

Father's mouth creases in a heavy frown as he takes in the sight of his daughter's bandaged fingers and scratched face, and immediately he turns an almost accusatory glare on the principal. "You didn't tell me she was hurt."

The principal blinks, flustered, and tries to formulate some response. Father roundly ignores her, and kneels down in front of Wanda instead. "We're going home," he tells her firmly, ushering her out of her seat. As Father starts to lead Wanda away, his hand on her shoulder, he notices Pietro also sitting on the bench for the first time. "You told me the problem was with Wanda." His voice is sharp. "Why is Pietro here?"

Finally, the principal seems to regain some level of control over her tongue. She mutters something under her breath that Pietro can't hear, but Wanda apparently can, because she turns her gaze up at her father, and suddenly she looks more as though she'd like to shrink and disappear into his shadow.

But Pietro doesn't really notice that. He's a bit more concerned with the look that's suddenly come over his father's face.

Though Father rarely smiles or shows any definitive signs of good cheer, rarer still does he wear the look on his face that Pietro can see now. There's not any one thing that particularly stands out as grotesque or overtly threatening. Frankly, his face doesn't look that different now than it did three seconds ago. But there's something there, something in hard, steely eyes and a lip that's curled back, that suggest that Father's coming very close to some sort of breaking point. The air goes cold around him. He is a dark, warped mirror of his daughter in these moments, the progenitor of all her anger; what goes on inside her every day is reflected in him, roiling, but colder, more focused.

"That hurts."

Wanda's frightened, quavering voice breaks the spell that has cast a pall of silence over this scene. Father casts a glance down at Wanda, seems to notice for the first time how tight his hand on her shoulder has become, and loosens his grip. With that, he seems to remember himself, remember where he is.

"Thank you for expressing your 'concerns'." In Pietro's mind, Father doesn't sound nearly so grateful as the phrase 'thank you' would imply. "However, I'm taking Wanda home." Without any further farewell or explanation, Father steers Wanda out the double doors, and is gone.

The principal, just a touch pale, disappears back inside her office.

Quite thoroughly forgotten, Pietro sits on the bench for a few moments longer, debating if he should wait for the principal to give him some sort of instruction. His stomach growls pitifully; he grimaces, and wishes he could have gone home too, if only to get something to eat. No word from the principal is forthcoming. Pietro gets up, and walks back to class in silence.

-0-0-0-

Wanda doesn't go back to school the next day. Or any other day, for that matter. Father pulls her out of school and doesn't let her go back. Meanwhile, he shows no sign of knowing precisely what to do with her, now that she's not going to school anymore and is staying at home, but still needs schooling.

For himself, Pietro finds himself doing and having to get used to something that normally would only happen if somebody in the family got sick: going somewhere without his sister being there with him.

It's not like they did everything together at school. Yeah, they usually ate lunch together, but when the bell rang for recess that was the cue for the twins to part ways—Pietro to go play soccer with his classmates, and Wanda to make a beeline for the swing set and stay there the whole time. It was generally only in class that the two of them did everything together, and that was usually because no one would work with Wanda because she was weird and the teachers thought she was _Difficult_, so they'd stick her with her brother for partner assignments or group projects. _'Oh, they're twins,' _the teachers must have thought to themselves. _'They're two halves of a whole,' _they must have thought. _'I shouldn't separate them.'_

And maybe it's just a little bit easier, Pietro thinks to himself one day. He's doing a math worksheet, and there's no Wanda sitting next to him, struggling through her problems, biting her lip, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. No Wanda looking small and lost and frustrated. No Wanda to spark mayhem with her sudden outbursts. No Wanda to ward off the kids who otherwise would have talked to him willingly.

That's just it. Wanda had no friends here, because everyone was scared of her and her anger, because everyone thought she was weird and creepy and avoided her like the plague. Pietro hasn't got any friends here either, not because of anything he's done or anything about him himself, but because he's Wanda's brother. There must be some sort of stamp on him (_'YEAH, I'M THE WEIRD GIRL'S BROTHER'_) or something, because people look at him the same way they look at Wanda, and avoid getting too close. Or they just ignore him. A lot of the times, that feels a hundred times worse, to be ignored.

But now, without her sitting next to him or following him to class, people… Well, there are the kids who point and whisper behind their hands. Pietro glares at them and demands to know exactly what they're whispering about and _why _they're pointing at him (As if he doesn't already know). There are those stupid jerks. But then, there's also the kids who will actually talk to him now that Wanda's out of his shadow. It's so much easier to get along with his classmates now. But still, that nagging feeling lingers with him.

Wanda's desk is empty, and stays empty. It's the only empty desk in the classroom, and everyone avoids it. Gives it the eye like it's some newly-erected memorial where an empty space used to be. Pietro fears Wanda for her anger, and, deep-down, resents her for making it nearly impossible for him to fit in. But she's always been there. They've never been apart for so long before.

He tries not to look at the desk, and gets back to work.

-0-0-0-

_It's a good thing it didn't rain today_, Pietro thinks to himself tetchily, as he slams the front door behind him and fumbles with the key while locking it. He's wind-blown and cold; his fingers are stiff. He just wants to crawl under his bed covers and chafe some warmth back into his hands…

All thought meanders off the track when Pietro turns around, and sees the state of the living room.

In short, it looks like someone let loose a whirlwind in their house. More extensively, there's not a single glass thing that hasn't been broken. The floor sparkles with glass the way the cafeteria did two weeks ago. The sofa is sagging; one of the legs has been knocked clean off. The coffee table's smashed. A table lamp's been overturned and lies, broken and twisted, atop a bed of glass.

Other young boys might take one look at this sort of scene and think _We've been robbed._ For himself, Pietro has his reasons for not seriously entertaining such a suspicion. He tries calling for his father, and when no response is forthcoming, he heads upstairs, where he knows he'll find the cause of the mess waiting.

Wanda's door is slightly ajar. "Wanda?" Pietro doesn't wait for an answer, and slips inside his sister's room. The curtains have been drawn shut, and beneath the pink-polka-dotted bed covers there lies a large, pulsating lump. Brow furrowed, ignoring all the instincts that advise caution in such a situation, Pietro walks over to the lump and presses a hand down on top of it briefly. "Wanda?"

"The bus came ages ago," comes the mumbled response. Wanda doesn't come out from under the covers, nor does she seem to want to. "Where've you been?"

Even knowing she can't see him, Pietro shrugs. "Had to walk home."

She doesn't say anything to that, no teasing or jibing or even the question _Why_? Inside, Pietro wishes she would. He wouldn't admit it without prompting, but he wants her to ask why so she can tell her. Maybe what he would tell her would cheer her up. Then maybe she'd stop acting like this. Pietro rubs the bruised knuckles on his right hand, dreading the silence that's yawned up between them.

"_Hey. Was that you saying all that?"_

"_Yeah. What exactly are you gonna do about it, ya midget?"_

Eventually, Pietro feels like he's going to have to find something else to say or leave before the silence rears its head and eats him. His eyes fall to Wanda's nightstand, and he frowns. "Hey, what's up with this timer? And why's that top there?" Sitting atop a couple of books on Wanda's cluttered nightstand are a blue-and-white spinning top and an oven timer, its dial pulled to zero.

Wanda squirms under the covers. "Father said… Father set the timer and made the top spin. He told me to use my powers to keep it spinning." Her voice is barely audible. The bed covers pucker. "But… I couldn't."

"Is that why the downstairs looks like we've been robbed?"

"Go away," Wanda snaps. The sudden spike of shame in her voice would tend to indicate _'yes.'_

"Do… Do you wanna play Battleship or something?"

"Go away!" she shrieks; the sudden noise out of the quiet makes Pietro jump. "Why can't you ever leave me alone?!" Her voice trembles and cracks, but there's no mistaking the made note in her words—or maybe her quavering voice just enhances his perceptions.

Pietro stares down at the lump that is his sister, blood pounding in his ears, breath catching in his throat. He can't find the words to tell her that he's just trying to help. He can't find the words to tell her what he thinks of all this. He can't find the words to tell her why he walked home, that he got kicked off the bus when some fifth-grader called Wanda a freak and Pietro got into a fight with him in the middle of the bus aisle—Wanda might be weird, but no one calls her a freak and after all the pointing and whispering something in him just broke to hear it said aloud. He can't find the words to tell her that her empty desk at school makes him ache like the bleeding wound she once gave him, one day outside. He can't find the words to tell her how sick he is of never being able to enjoy being around her because he's afraid of what will happen.

Then, the bed starts to shake. Not just the mattress, or just the flame, but the whole bed. "Pietro." There's a new timbre to Wanda's growling voice, not one he likes. "I said go away. So go away!"

Anger bubbles in Pietro's throat and he can breathe and speak again. "Fine." Even to his own ears, that retort sounds pathetic. "You're no fun when you're like this."

This wasn't what he meant to say at all. He'd meant to say something deep and meaningful and grown-up, and not sound like a stupid little kid who's being a brat because his sister wouldn't play with him. But instead, whatever that "deep and meaningful and grown-up" thing he was going to say came out as "_You're no fun when you're like this._" Those words, Pietro decides numbly, as he slams the door and tries to block out the sound of sniffling from the next room over, are going to come back to haunt him some day.

-0-0-0-

It's raining, splattering on the window panes and darkening the sky, but inside they are high and dry, washed in steady golden light. And there's food on the table, growing cold with each passing second, but no one makes so much as a move to eat it.

Pietro picks glumly at his food with his fork, unable to bring himself to eat any of it. It's probably a testament to how distracted Father is that he doesn't scold Pietro for this breach of table manners, or even seem to notice. And under normal circumstances, Pietro wouldn't be so unenthusiastic towards his supper, either. Normally, he'd be done by now, and squirming in his seat since Father isn't a believer in letting one person up from the dinner table before everyone's done.

Tonight, though, tonight's another matter entirely.

Pietro went ahead and told Father about his fight on the bus when the latter got home. He'd hear about it from the school soon enough and though Pietro doesn't think he'll ever be sorry about what he did, a spot of damage control seemed prudent. Father wasn't exactly what you would call angry to hear about Pietro's mishap. Though he scolded him for losing his temper in such a way, he seemed to approve. No, that's not what's making the atmosphere at the dinner table so tense and strained. Pietro's not sure what it is that's making them feel like this.

Wanda stares dejectedly down at her plate, hands hidden beneath the table cloth; she doesn't seem to want to lift her head for fear of making eye contact with someone, and doesn't seem to want to accidentally glance towards the living room, which is still a scene of (glass) carnage. This is about the only time Pietro sees her anymore, at meal times. She hardly ever comes out of her room, keeping the curtains closed and the lights turned off. He tries not to see the red lining her eyes. She doesn't seem to be aware that she's being stared at.

Under normal circumstances, Father wouldn't be neglecting his supper any more than Pietro would. But instead of eating, he's spent every moment since he sat down at the dinner table staring at his daughter, dead silent. His eyes are glazed over and the lines on his face look deeper, sharper, like they've stretched overnight.

There is something in his eyes, something dry and aged and cracked that Pietro can't even begin to pin down or identify. Like an old book when it's had the dust blown away from it for the first time in years. Like the erstwhile sleeper blinking at light flooding their dark room. Like someone who's been jerked away from their reality and dumped in another.

While there's no logic to feeling the way he does, Pietro's glad that Father isn't looking at _him_ that way.

-0-0-0-

Later that night, Pietro and Wanda's pre-bedtime rituals are interrupted by Father telling them to put their coats on and get in the car.

Rain drums on the roof and just as at supper no one says a word. Their destination seems to be somewhere in town; the rain's filter makes the lights of stores and street lamps waver and dance. Pietro digs his hands further into the warmth of his sweatshirt pocket; even with the heater on, there's a pervasive chill that seeps into his bones, slowly drenching him with cold.

_What's going on? _Pietro wonders to himself, wondering at the same time if he really wants to know the answer. Father's offered no explanation for where they're going or why they're going there _now_, well after dark and when both Pietro and Wanda would be getting ready to go to bed. _I've still got homework. Am I gonna be able to do that?_

Beside him, Wanda has sunk down into her seat, a small, huddled mass pulling as close to the window as she can. Her heavy eyelids keep drawing shut; her face has gone slack. She has to fight not to fall asleep in the car, and Pietro can tell that, whatever she thinks about this, she's not nearly as concerned with their potential destination as he is. _She just wants to go back home and get into bed. _He kind of wishes that he could be so unconcerned, but mostly, Pietro's just envious of Wanda's ability to fall asleep in the car.

Another fifteen minutes or so pass by and Pietro starts to drop off to sleep himself, despite feeling cold in his hands and feet and face. Awareness of where they are drops from his mind; all that matters to him is that his eyes are drooping and the world's turning fuzzy around him as the urge to sleep becomes overwhelming—

Pietro is awoken with a jolt when the car comes to a halt.

"Out of the car, both of you."

Now bewildered and uncomfortably wide-awake, the twins follow their father out of the car and into the freezing rain. The fact that the car's been parked beneath the shelter of an overgrown oak barely seems to make any difference. Pietro shivers at the cold and scowls up at the black-gray sky. The scowl melts from his face, replaced by mounting unease, when he sees what's standing across the road from where they parked.

The old mental hospital.

A light is on in the first floor, and suddenly the front door opens. Two men come down the steps, out into the rain, their raincoats clinging to their bodies. They approach, and one of them looks intently at Wanda. "Her?" he asks, brow furrowed.

Father nods. "Yes, her. You're to go with them, Wanda," he says to his daughter evenly, betraying nothing in his voice.

The other man, younger and paler and looking just a touch gloomy at this whole thing, taps Wanda's now-shaking shoulder. "Come along, Wanda," he half-whispers.

All of this seems incredibly unreal to Pietro. _What's going on? What's happening? _he wonders, something hard and cold settling in the pit of his stomach. _What's happening with Wanda? _All of a sudden, reality clicks in Pietro's mind and the truth comes to him, but that only serves to make this situation seem even more surreal. _Why is she going with them?_

The final puzzle piece falls into place.

_He's sending her away._

_Why?_

Wanda, meanwhile, figures it out—or seems to—a little while before her brother does. "Pietro," she whispers hoarsely as the men start to lead her away, out into the rain. Tears are welling up in her frantic eyes, and Pietro can only stare, numb and cold and shivering and regretful, stare at her, as she's led away.

In the street, Wanda starts to fight to get away from the two men, whimpering and trying to wrest her arm out of the offending grip, but she trips and falls on the rain-slicked asphalt and the older man hefts her up, arms wrapped firmly around her midsection. She kicks and screams and cries, arms and legs flailing, sobbing pitifully, but this does not earn her back her freedom. "Father!" she wails, desperate for some sort of repeal, desperate for mercy.

He doesn't look at her.

Father says nothing as Wanda is taken away. Pietro stares at her, unable to blink, unable to cry, unable to make a sound, almost unable to breathe. He just… He just can't believe this is happening. Any second now, he's going to hear the alarm clock blare and he'll wake up from this surreal, disjointed nightmare. It'll be time to get ready for school and he'll knock on Wanda's door to try to figure out if she wants breakfast…

No. No, that's not it. That's not it at all. This is really happening. This is real. This is utterly, horribly real. They're taking Wanda away. Maybe forever.

_Why didn't I say anything?_

The men get Wanda across the street and start up the steps to the mental hospital. Father looks over at the car, and waves his hand. The car doors pop open, and he starts towards the car. After a moment, a long, frozen moment of staring and feeling words in his throat (_but never coming out_), Pietro follows him.

Later, years later when he feels called upon to give some sort of explanation, Pietro will say that his father convinced him that this was all for the best and that there was no alternative. That's a lie. After tonight, they never talk about Wanda again. Her absence becomes the elephant in the room, sitting in the corner, staring at them, daring them to say something.

In reality, as Pietro climbs back into the car, as they drive back home with him with his forehead pressed against the window, trying hard not to look at Father or draw his attention, he formulates his own truth about this whole thing.

This can be taken as a life lesson.

_If I don't shape up, that's what's going to happen to me._

(In the morning, Pietro will wake up, and miss his sister. He'll tell himself to forget her.)


End file.
